Fall has arrived. Not officially — the equinox is Thursday — but Virginia has decided it's fall and the trees are starting to agree. The air has that crisp quality that makes you want to wear a flannel and drink something warm and pretend you're in a movie about college life instead of driving a 2009 Honda Civic to a campus where you don't sleep.
Midterms are in three weeks. Stats is going to be a problem. I understand the concepts in a vague, 'this makes sense when the professor explains it' way, but the moment I look at the practice problems alone, my brain files a formal complaint. Dana is tutoring me, which is generous and also humbling because she's good at math in the effortless way that some people are good at math and the rest of us just stand there watching them do it.
Comm 101 midterm is a paper, not an exam, which is my wheelhouse. Professor Whitman wants us to write about 'communication as identity' — how the way we communicate shapes who we are. I'm going to write about military family communication: the phone calls during deployments that are twenty minutes of 'I'm fine, are you fine, the kids are fine' because there's no time for nuance. The letters Mom wrote to Dad in Iraq that she never sent (she told me about these once, late at night, and I could tell she regretted telling me because some things between a husband and wife are supposed to stay between them). The way Dad says 'be safe' instead of 'I love you' and the way we all understand that they mean the same thing.
I think it's going to be a good paper. I think Professor Whitman is going to write 'EXCELLENT' again. I want that word in all caps on everything I do.
Mom kicked off fall cooking season this week with her beef and barley soup, which is the official soup of September in the Abernathy household. It's simple — beef chuck roasted until brown, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, beef broth, barley, thyme, bay leaves — and it simmers for two hours until the barley is plump and the beef is tender and the broth is deep and dark and warming. She makes a huge pot and it lasts three days. By day three, the barley has absorbed most of the broth and it's more stew than soup, which is actually better.
I've started bringing Mom's soups to campus for lunch. Dana tried the beef barley and said, 'Your mom should sell this.' I said, 'Don't tell her that, she'll start a business and we'll never eat again because all the food will be for sale.' But secretly I was proud. My mom's soup, in a Tupperware, in a college cafeteria, outperforming the pizza and the salad bar and the sad pasta station. Donna Abernathy wins again.
Fall is here. College is happening. The soup is simmering. And I'm starting to think that maybe the commuter life isn't a consolation prize — maybe it's just a different prize. I get to eat Mom's cooking every night. I get to sleep in my own bed. I get to sit in the kitchen and learn things that no communications textbook will ever teach me.
That's not less than. That's different. And different, I'm learning, can be its own kind of good.
The soup that kept showing up in that kitchen—the one Dana couldn’t stop talking about, the one that made a college cafeteria stop and pay attention—was Mom’s Polish Barley and Vegetable Soup, and it felt like the most honest recipe I could share this week. It’s the kind of thing that gets better the longer it sits, just like this semester is starting to feel better the longer I settle into it. Here’s how Donna Abernathy makes it, and how I’m slowly learning to make it too.
Polish Barley and Vegetable Soup
Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 2 hours | Total Time: 2 hours 20 minutes | Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 lbs beef chuck, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 large yellow onion, diced
- 3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
- 3 stalks celery, sliced
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 8 cups beef broth
- 3/4 cup pearl barley, rinsed
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
- 1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- Fresh parsley, chopped, for serving
Instructions
- Brown the beef. Heat olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Working in batches, add beef cubes in a single layer and sear until deeply browned on all sides, about 3–4 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
- Sauté the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. Add onion, carrots, and celery to the same pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and tomato paste and cook 1 minute more, stirring to coat the vegetables.
- Build the broth. Return the browned beef to the pot. Pour in the beef broth and stir to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Add bay leaves, thyme, salt, and pepper.
- Simmer low and slow. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Cover and simmer for 1 hour, until the beef is beginning to turn tender.
- Add the barley. Stir in the rinsed pearl barley. Continue simmering, covered, for another 45–60 minutes, until the barley is plump and tender and the beef is falling-apart soft. The broth will deepen in color and the barley will thicken the soup considerably.
- Taste and finish. Remove the bay leaves. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed. Ladle into bowls and top with fresh parsley.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 310 | Protein: 24g | Fat: 11g | Carbs: 28g | Fiber: 5g | Sodium: 740mg
About the cook who shared this
Rachel Abernathy
Week 26 of Rachel’s 30-year story
· San Diego, California
Rachel is a twenty-eight-year-old Marine wife and mom of two who has moved five times in six years and learned to cook a Thanksgiving dinner with half her cookware still in boxes. She married young, survived postpartum depression, and feeds her family of four on a junior Marine's salary with a freezer full of pre-made meals and a crockpot that has never let her down. She writes for the military spouses who are cooking dinner alone in base housing and wondering if they're enough. You are.
